(no subject)
If I haven't mentioned it recently, I'm going to Lithuania on Wednesday. I'm kind of nervous and it doesn't help that everyone in the world is telling me un-reassuring things. My mother is particularly unhelpful. "Have you been on this website? It says you have to stay away from wooded areas or you'll get tick-borne encephalitis and die." "They have loads of rabies over there. You should have had innoculations but you're not going to now and you'll get rabies and die" etc etc. Attempts to point out that ticks are more of a problem for wild campers than people in the city and that there is also rabies in the parts of Europe that she frequents, such as France and Austria, gets the response "Yeah, yeah, you think it's all perfectly safe and that everyone's nice and you're not streetwise at all and you're going to die!". Likewise with "there are loads of car accidents there" and "I'm not going to be getting in any cars". I haven't dared counter "pickpockets and bag-snatchers on public transport" with "Yes, same in London."
I can see that there's an element of this not being the brightest idea in the world but I don't think it can be any worse than Bucharest, which was the biggest culture shock I've ever had in my sheltered western European life. Bucharest was scary and untamed and half knocked down and still feeling the shadow of dictatorship and was rife with feral dogs and I jumped off a train in the middle of nowhere in Transylvania by accident and it was almost too hot for me to be able to cope and I got lost and wandered the bad parts of the city because I couldn't find the nice parts etc etc. Have I ever written up that trip? Well, that's a pretty good summary of it. Vilnius, to the best of my knowledge, has not recently emerged from the shadow of a dictator. It was a European Capital of Culture two years ago. Turku in Finland is this year and I seem to remember that being very pleasant. Vilnius is a modern European city, growing in its tourism thing and attracting people and all nice stuff and... although I have no frame of reference whatsoever language-wise, it's got to be both better and nicer than Bucharest. I won't do anything stupid like roam the station district after dark, I won't wave my phone around, I won't attempt to seduce strangers or get into their cars. Believe me, I'm a vulnerable female single traveller. That in itself is a bit of a risk but I'm not going to be adding any more risk to it if I can possibly help it. And I'm going in three days. Please, please, stop trying to petrify me. Being in a state of terror where I'm jumping at shadows before I even arrive is not conducive to enjoying the place. It's not a good omen that my guidebook has gone missing.
My philosophy (and justification for doing stupid things like this is) that if I want to do things, I'm going to have to do them on my own because no one will come with me. It's a choice between sitting on my bed staring out of the window and going it alone. This was a lesson I had hammered into me in Switzerland. I lived there for less than a year and I had a lot of spare time. I wasted weeks, if not months, waiting for my friends to be able/to want to come with me on a trip to the mountains or to this or that city. Eventually I realised that if I waited for them, it would be July and I'd have to go home without having seen anything. If I wanted to see any of Switzerland outside of the city I lived in, I had to go on my own. I think that was the most important thing I learned at university. (That and how to navigate an airport by myself.)
It's also the reason I'm the Larry at comedy shows. I want to see these people and I can't find anyone to come with me. Annie was supposed to be coming to see Ed Byrne with me - when he was last in town she was a little jealous so I invited her this time. I knew from the start it wouldn't actually happen. Back in September I had "Oh... that's a long time away. I can't think that far ahead!" and that went on up to January, at which point it changed to "That's a long way away" (I use the phrase "in town" extremely lightly. He wasn't coming any closer than forty miles away at the time. Now he is. Unfortunately, she lives on one side of my half-hour bubble and the closer theatre is on the other side of my half-hour bubble, making it an hour from where she lives and therefore still about forty miles). Eventually, last weekend, she told me she couldn't come. Which I'd expected for six months and it had got to the point where it was a massive relief to actually be told it. I have invited Mandy who is both keen and not afraid of forty miles and a late night but who has not let me know in nearly a week whether or not her husband is working that night. It's far less stressful to go on my own and not have to worry about whether or not other people can make it.
In other news... well, there's not much. Going to Lithuania and "I need to find some quiz questions for Brownies by bedtime tonight" are the only things in my brain at the moment. This morning I acquired a sudden crush on Brian Cox. I watched him on Something for the Weekend and giggled and melted and generally went a bit soppy at him. I don't think this will last long, judging by the fact that as soon as he's out of sight, I've forgotten him.
I ate on my broken tooth the other day. It felt fine at the time, I started thinking that it just needed a bit of time to heal up or something. Nope. By bedtime, agonising toothache. At just before two in the morning, I was drinking liquid painkiller out of the bottle. No spoon and the dosing syringe still had a small amount of gunge in it from the last time I used it. Liquid painkiller tickles but I can't get up in the middle of the night and go downstairs for a drink. I'd be shot. And besides, if I did go downstairs, I could just take some adult medicine.
I have a small ulcer caused by the rubbing of a sharp bottom tooth. It has become the only thing in the world I can think about. Poking it, prodding it, biting it, trying to get rid of it (yes, I know all those things will just make it worse). I should be packing and thinking of some quiz questions. I can't. I have an ulcer and it needs to be prodded. Even noises in another room is doing my head in right now. I have a tiny tiny pain in my mouth and it's become my world. Stop rustling those fucking bags! I can't stand the noise! Oh, but I can't actually go and yell that because I will be accused of being totally unreasonable and incredibly bad-tempered.
I can see that there's an element of this not being the brightest idea in the world but I don't think it can be any worse than Bucharest, which was the biggest culture shock I've ever had in my sheltered western European life. Bucharest was scary and untamed and half knocked down and still feeling the shadow of dictatorship and was rife with feral dogs and I jumped off a train in the middle of nowhere in Transylvania by accident and it was almost too hot for me to be able to cope and I got lost and wandered the bad parts of the city because I couldn't find the nice parts etc etc. Have I ever written up that trip? Well, that's a pretty good summary of it. Vilnius, to the best of my knowledge, has not recently emerged from the shadow of a dictator. It was a European Capital of Culture two years ago. Turku in Finland is this year and I seem to remember that being very pleasant. Vilnius is a modern European city, growing in its tourism thing and attracting people and all nice stuff and... although I have no frame of reference whatsoever language-wise, it's got to be both better and nicer than Bucharest. I won't do anything stupid like roam the station district after dark, I won't wave my phone around, I won't attempt to seduce strangers or get into their cars. Believe me, I'm a vulnerable female single traveller. That in itself is a bit of a risk but I'm not going to be adding any more risk to it if I can possibly help it. And I'm going in three days. Please, please, stop trying to petrify me. Being in a state of terror where I'm jumping at shadows before I even arrive is not conducive to enjoying the place. It's not a good omen that my guidebook has gone missing.
My philosophy (and justification for doing stupid things like this is) that if I want to do things, I'm going to have to do them on my own because no one will come with me. It's a choice between sitting on my bed staring out of the window and going it alone. This was a lesson I had hammered into me in Switzerland. I lived there for less than a year and I had a lot of spare time. I wasted weeks, if not months, waiting for my friends to be able/to want to come with me on a trip to the mountains or to this or that city. Eventually I realised that if I waited for them, it would be July and I'd have to go home without having seen anything. If I wanted to see any of Switzerland outside of the city I lived in, I had to go on my own. I think that was the most important thing I learned at university. (That and how to navigate an airport by myself.)
It's also the reason I'm the Larry at comedy shows. I want to see these people and I can't find anyone to come with me. Annie was supposed to be coming to see Ed Byrne with me - when he was last in town she was a little jealous so I invited her this time. I knew from the start it wouldn't actually happen. Back in September I had "Oh... that's a long time away. I can't think that far ahead!" and that went on up to January, at which point it changed to "That's a long way away" (I use the phrase "in town" extremely lightly. He wasn't coming any closer than forty miles away at the time. Now he is. Unfortunately, she lives on one side of my half-hour bubble and the closer theatre is on the other side of my half-hour bubble, making it an hour from where she lives and therefore still about forty miles). Eventually, last weekend, she told me she couldn't come. Which I'd expected for six months and it had got to the point where it was a massive relief to actually be told it. I have invited Mandy who is both keen and not afraid of forty miles and a late night but who has not let me know in nearly a week whether or not her husband is working that night. It's far less stressful to go on my own and not have to worry about whether or not other people can make it.
In other news... well, there's not much. Going to Lithuania and "I need to find some quiz questions for Brownies by bedtime tonight" are the only things in my brain at the moment. This morning I acquired a sudden crush on Brian Cox. I watched him on Something for the Weekend and giggled and melted and generally went a bit soppy at him. I don't think this will last long, judging by the fact that as soon as he's out of sight, I've forgotten him.
I ate on my broken tooth the other day. It felt fine at the time, I started thinking that it just needed a bit of time to heal up or something. Nope. By bedtime, agonising toothache. At just before two in the morning, I was drinking liquid painkiller out of the bottle. No spoon and the dosing syringe still had a small amount of gunge in it from the last time I used it. Liquid painkiller tickles but I can't get up in the middle of the night and go downstairs for a drink. I'd be shot. And besides, if I did go downstairs, I could just take some adult medicine.
I have a small ulcer caused by the rubbing of a sharp bottom tooth. It has become the only thing in the world I can think about. Poking it, prodding it, biting it, trying to get rid of it (yes, I know all those things will just make it worse). I should be packing and thinking of some quiz questions. I can't. I have an ulcer and it needs to be prodded. Even noises in another room is doing my head in right now. I have a tiny tiny pain in my mouth and it's become my world. Stop rustling those fucking bags! I can't stand the noise! Oh, but I can't actually go and yell that because I will be accused of being totally unreasonable and incredibly bad-tempered.